Leatherhead family's anger at clamped cars

Nicola Bannister, who lives at Waterfields, Leatherhead, with one the clamped cars

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A TEAM of clampers contracted by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) targeted Leatherhead this week to find and disable untaxed vehicles.

Their sweep included Waterfields, where contractors NSL ended up clamping two cars which were lawfully parked on private land. Although the vehicles were not taxed, they both had the necessary off-road notices.

The cars belonged to Simon Bannister, who had taken the afternoon off work to have one of them tested for an MOT.

“My son bought the car on Saturday,” said his mother Nicola Bannister.

“He worked on it that day and he booked for an MOT and took the afternoon off work.

“He got home and the cars were clamped with notices from the DVLA. Obviously he was not very pleased.

"He rang through and about four phone calls later they said ‘it looks as though it’s on your driveway but we need to make sure’.”

But that took more than 24 hours, several phone calls and Mrs Bannister having to fax copies of the title deeds to her home outlining where he property began and ended.

“There’s quite a lot of cars that have been clamped in my area,” she said.

“I’m assuming that they are just going round clamping any vehicles that have not been taxed, which I don’t have a problem with, but they have no right to come onto my driveway.

“It’s an open parking space but it’s perfectly obvious that it is not a public road.

“We are going to go for compensation for loss of earning. We won’t get anywhere of course because they are a law unto themselves.

"We reported it to the police because it’s trespass, but the police aren’t interested because it’s private property.

"My understanding of the law is that as long as you have a statutory off-road notice, you can park them [cars] on your land. It is off the road.”

Eventually the cars were released, but without any announcement. Mrs Bannister stumbled across the clamping team on Wednesday as they liberated the two vehicles.

Tim Cowen, of NSL, which provides a nationwide service for the DVLA, immobilising untaxed vehicles, said: “We are allowed to carry out enforcement on some private land to which the public has access – such as car parks – and a vehicle which is untaxed subject to a statutory off-road notification (SORN) should not be kept in such places.

“I believe we acted properly in this instance since the vehicles in question were neither taxed nor SORN-ed by the owner.

“However, we do accept that the owner had only just bought the vehicles and after we took the enforcement action he made it clear that he was about to MOT and tax the vehicles.

“We couldn’t have known that at the time of course, but now that we do it was probably right to use discretion and release the vehicles free of charge.”